Jane Aster Roe on The Defendants Podcast, Trauma, Healing & Issues with the Justice System // #072

heartdea13r Podcast w/ chr1stoph3r g0nda // Episode 72 // Jane Aster Roe (Multimedia Writer, Producer, Storyteller, and Host of The Defendants Podcast)

Episode Summary:

Jane Aster Roe, host of The Defendants Podcast, breaks down how sexual assault cases move through the justice system—and why it so often fails survivors—while sharing hard-earned insights on healing, community support, and what real justice could look like beyond the courtroom.

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Full Episode Transcript:

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (00:00.24)
forward to kicking off my weekend with some like stimulating and also revealing conversation. It’s funny, okay I was just in town I live close to Squamish so I went to Squamish there’s an incredible massage therapist there that I go to. I want to say regularly but I have a bad habit of not making it regular. I just find so much value with

Jane Aster Roe (00:08.299)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (00:26.18)
massage post training. like, you know, it’s like anything else in life. You take on so much, your body takes on so much. You have to figure out a way to decompress all the work that you’re doing. And I’m like driving home, feel it all mellow. And I’m like, man, well, how am going to even start this conversation? Like it’s so different from my other types of guests because it’s, there’s no album or movie. It’s a podcast and there’s like content, but the topic is not something that I’m versed

in as much as other topics and then all of a sudden…

song came on and I’ve never heard this song before. I’m just gonna read the lyrics. It’s cracker, the song is get off this and the chorus which basically just was like boom lightning bolt this is what I’m doing. Let’s get off this and get on with it. If you want to change the world shut your mouth and start to spin it. Get off this, get on with it. If you want to change the world shut your mouth and start this minute.

Jane Aster Roe (01:27.374)
I love that I know that song. It’s a good one. What I love about the project too, and what I love about the podcast is it is actually one of the biggest things that we were hoping for and that we put into it while we were making it is that we wanted it to be accessible for people who have never engaged in the topic before.

That’s what is really important to us is that this is something that if you sort of only have a vague idea about kind of what the situation is with sexual violence and those cases and how they move through the justice system and you sort of only have like the biggest idea of like, yeah, like I hear about that in the headline. I know that it’s not good, but you’ve never actually dipped your toe into the actual conversation and looking into it.

We want the show to be for those people because it is a really big topic and it’s a hard conversation.

but it’s also a really important one and it should be something that is for everybody. It is something that we should all care about. And so the show is designed so that it can be accessible to everybody and so that the information is information that we’re all learning together so that we can all have a better.

idea of what is happening right now so that we know kind of what we want to do in the future because again, I really I believe really strongly that we need to Know what a problem is and understand a problem before we can step forward into changing it the legal system is really complicated and So we kind of have to demystify it before we can actually

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (03:22.492)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (03:24.008)
properly move into changing it and getting, I think having mass movements of success to change it starts with demystifying how it works.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (03:32.123)
Yeah.

You know what’s funny is you said something there that that kind of perfectly ties together or maybe tease up our conversation because there’s actually three elements, not one. and it’s the justice system or the legal system. It’s like the actual act of something happening to someone. And then there’s also the dealing with

having had that happen to you, right? There’s three very complex layers to this and I wanna kind of go into each one, but first, just so that we are setting the tone, it’s called the Defendants Podcast. It’s a six part mini series. is done by you and an amazing team of other contributors who I’ll let you talk about without me ruining it, but it’s really about, as you said, demystifying or maybe removing some of the taboo around sexual assault and violence.

Jane Aster Roe (04:05.57)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (04:27.198)
Is that correct?

Jane Aster Roe (04:29.218)
Yeah, so really what it is, it’s about how sexual assault cases move through the justice system and why it so often doesn’t work. Because most of the time, those cases move through the justice system and are not able to find what people would call success, meaning…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (04:50.45)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (04:52.118)
justice really. You tried these cases enter the justice system and try to find the best way to describe it would be a guilty verdict, right? As that’s kind of how people traditionally understand success in the justice system, that very rarely happens with sexual assault cases. So the show is trying to unpack, okay, why is it that it’s so hard for these cases to get to that point? And then what actually does

justice really mean in the aftermath of sexual violence?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (05:27.154)
Yeah. So just to be clear, you’re talking, you and I are both in Canada, the justice system within Canada, or is this something that can apply to other countries as well, even though justice systems technically are different everywhere?

Jane Aster Roe (05:43.084)
Yeah, so the show really focuses on the justice system that exists in Canada and the United States because the justice system is very similar, like our justice system in Canada and the United States is very similar. So it is a show that focuses on those systems. Our justice systems in Canada and the United States were born out of…

the British system because we were colonized by Britain. And when you get colonized by a country, get that’s the law system that you end up adopting and using. So it also sort of matches. does it does kind of line up also with with Britain’s justice system. They are a little bit different now, but it does kind of line up with them as well. And we we did speak to some some survivors in England as well over the course of this the show.

I don’t know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (06:36.722)
I mean I heard the first episode that’s the only one that was allowed to hear so I checked it out I was surprised that it was shorter But I was also happy that it was shorter because it made it easier to consume the whole thing and then be ready for our conversation So like I think was about 25 minutes Which is a really like solid amount of time to be able to dive into it There were two other things I really liked one was it felt very chill and now that I hear your voice And I know that you’re narrating this thing like it felt very mellow. It didn’t feel attacky. It felt more like

speak and not in a negative like monotonous way, plain speaking. These are the facts. We’re just having conversations and then you also immediately address the fact that this isn’t something specific to a certain gender, that this befalls men and boys as well and other communities too so that it’s not like a one-sided, this is kind of like all types of sexual assault.

Jane Aster Roe (07:29.932)
Yeah, really.

The goal, like the vibe that we’re that we were really trying to capture is that I’m going to take your hand and I’m going to guide you through this conversation as the listener. That’s so I’m happy that you that you felt that as you were listening. The episodes are all like compact to their 25 minutes because again, it’s a hard conversation. And so, you know, really like quite longer conversations. think people don’t want to be living in the world of sexual assault for real.

long periods of time. So we wanted to give like digestible pieces of like digestible episode links.

but also within that 25 minutes, there’s still a lot of information that can be packed into that. You then can sit with that and digest it before then getting the next one and then getting that next little bit of digestible bit of information. And they all kind of build off of each other. Yeah. And sorry to adjust your second point. So sexual violence does happen to everybody. you know, it’s something that affects everybody. You know, like we have,

list out one of the early on in the episode we list out the stats of how it affects sort of different communities and different people because I think it is it’s really prevalent.

Jane Aster Roe (08:57.782)
And I think people sort of have a baseline idea of how prevalent it is for women. It also is prevalent for men. I think people don’t always know that because there’s a lot of stigma attached to sexual assault with men. Men.

like do you have, you know, there’s a lot of studies that follow that men have a harder time speaking up about it because of how much stigma there is attached to it. But, you know, there is a lot of research that shows that it is also happening to men. And so this is something that is affecting everybody.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (09:38.234)
Yeah, I think you said that it was a one in seven men will deal with attempted rape or some kind of attempted sexual assault. I don’t want to like screw up the statistic.

Jane Aster Roe (09:46.22)
Yeah. Nope, that’s right.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (09:50.694)
Well, why don’t we dive in by you telling us a bit about you, like why you, why are you doing this? I mean, my assumptions are that you had stuff happen to you and that you decided to take your experiences and share them outward in order to help impact positive change.

Jane Aster Roe (10:10.766)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I did. I do have my own experience with the justice system. And I do like, that does get touched upon a little bit across the series. I think you probably heard in the first episode. But…

you know, most of sort of what I talk about in relation to myself across the series is my experience with the justice system because really what inspired me to create this series was about, was how

going through the actual process of trying to get justice was so challenging and how difficult and how long and how ridiculous and sometimes even comically so that process was and how, you know, stepping into it was almost like stepping into another world where I had to learn sort of like a new language to understand. had to sort of get really good at understanding legal jargon and figure out

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (11:01.329)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (11:24.08)
how to read legal documents and legal contracts. And all of the sudden, you sort of are faced with being thrown into a world that people go to school and get a degree for to understand. And then you sort of have to really quickly figure out how to navigate it and kind of like hold on for your life.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (11:48.977)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (11:49.87)
And the process of that and how challenging it was and speaking to other people and hearing their stories, that’s sort of what really inspired me was the actual process of how challenging the actual system is.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (12:08.636)
Yeah. So not to trivialize any of it, but was there one phase that was more difficult, like the actual abuse or assault or having the wherewithal to do the healing and then start to actually speak about it and then the legal system? Like which one would you say was like, my God, why is this so difficult?

Jane Aster Roe (12:30.88)
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, one of the other things, and like this is now me getting a little bit meta about the whole thing, but one of the other things is that a lot of the times when you go through a sexual assault process, like you go through a sexual assault situation, that is obviously horrendous. Then…

sometime, then you know, if you choose to go forward or you disclose, you will go through, you know, a police investigation and then a criminal investigation. Then sometimes people will choose to go through a civil investigation, which is a different type of law. Civil investigations are lawsuits. So that’s when you like sue someone and say like, you harmed me.

And I did both. I did a criminal situation and then I did a civil situation. At the end, oftentimes with civil law, that’s how people end up in situations where they are…

only allowed to say certain things at the end of that, right? Where at the resolution of it, the way you resolve it, the way that civil situations are resolved is by the victim sort of agreeing, and this is me speaking generally and also carefully, but the victim sort of…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (13:52.21)
you

Jane Aster Roe (14:11.328)
agrees that they will not share certain details about what happened, right? So part of one of the challenges was making the show, and that’s why I’m really grateful that we had a really good team of lawyers to help us with making the show, is that there are certain things that I just am not allowed to say because I am kind of locked into an agreement.

lots of times when I’m actually quite frustrated by the fact that I have that. At the time I was happy about it, but sometimes I’m frustrated because I feel a little bit limited. But it also is something that’s just really common. It’s a common result. And there are lots of people who are fighting.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (14:55.387)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (15:10.388)
to sort of like change regulations around that because they view sort of non-disclosures. And again, now I’m speaking broadly. There are people in the community who view non-disclosures as sort of like a way of silencing people from speaking up because a lot of people will get a non-disclosure and then they will feel like they can no longer talk about what happened. I’m sort of working around that, but…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (15:21.65)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (15:27.953)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (15:38.57)
Yeah, lots of people will feel like they just can’t talk about it anymore at all. And for some people there, that’s okay, and they’re fine with that. Some people feel very much like, some people feel harmed by the fact that they can’t speak anymore. And so, you know, that’s sort of another like layer of

that sometimes comes out through the justice system is that layer of silencing. So all of that kind of meta commentary is to say that there’s really only so much that I can say about my own story. But what I will say is that the, so to answer the original question, the actual assault was horrendous.

The criminal case and everything that followed broke me down in a way that prevented me from healing and prevented me from being able to move forward and felt contrary to justice.

And I was looking like I wanted justice, but the way the system was set up felt contrary to that. And that I think is something that we should be looking at as a society, because I think there are a lot of people who feel that way. I’ve spoken to a lot of survivors over the course of the two years that I’ve been making this show and…

in the aftermath of such an intense trauma, a lot of people feel really, you know, the event is such a horrendous, horrible event. You do want…

Jane Aster Roe (17:42.03)
level of justice afterwards. But what that justice looks like isn’t necessarily the legal system because a lot of the times the legal system as it stands is not giving anything that lends towards what feels like any kind of true justice.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (18:02.906)
Yeah. I really appreciate the situation you’re in because you, you so passionately want to talk about this, but then also have to be like cautious with what you’re saying in terms of, you know, having, having,

I mean a non-disclosure, also wanting to do the best to promote this show, to get the information out there to a wider audience. So I take your time. I totally understand. And all of the experiences are different. I’ve never experienced this personally like happening to myself. So I don’t even know what you have gone through. I can’t even imagine it. I’ve had my own types of, you know, trauma before me. And I know that part of like,

For me at least, the single biggest part of the healing was being able to talk about it. Being able to, whether that’s with my partner or a therapist or multiple therapists or my friends or family, whoever would listen, being able to just talk it out and get it out, even internally, right? Talking to yourself, meditating, praying, whatever one does, that is such an important part of the healing process. Are there…

Are there a lot of people that maybe don’t know how to use those tools to help themselves and then they put too much weight in the justice system or too much weight in like a, something happening to the other person rather than trying to control it themselves.

Jane Aster Roe (19:29.678)
That’s an interesting question.

I think that you have to… So what I will say is a lot of people do not even bother trying with the justice system. We know that probably upwards of 94 % of people who experience this crime do not even try. Those people are trying to…

those people do find ways of healing and moving forward. A lot of that, I’m sure, is through talking about it, therapy, you know, all of the things that you just mentioned. But if somebody ran you over with a car,

You would feel traumatized by that situation. You would want to talk about it to your friends. You would want to go to therapy. You would want to do all of those things. But we as a society would then say, that person who ran you over with the car, they need to have, they need to take accountability for the fact that they did it. So while yes, I do think that it is important that

people are able to seek therapy and speak to friends and all those things. I also think that we don’t want to live in a world where we’re not able to hold people accountable for harming others. And I think that right now we live in a world where this is a crime.

Jane Aster Roe (21:16.238)
a a crime that impacts people often for the rest of their lives and that we seem to be unable to hold people accountable for. And so I think it’s two separate things. I think it’s, yes, everybody should, you know, talk about it and do all those things. And also.

It’s not wrong to want to hope that there will be accountability. I also think talking to people who have been through it that…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (21:49.264)
Hmm.

Jane Aster Roe (21:56.802)
talking to a lot of people who’ve gone through it, most people who go through it don’t have a lot of necessarily faith that the justice system will provide them with good justice, or if they do have it at the beginning, they lose it really quickly. Very quickly, they realize, this process is not gonna be great for me. And so then they start turning to other things and other ways to help them while they’re going through it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:07.377)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (22:26.762)
So I think that the problem of like holding stock in the justice system isn’t too much of a problem and like people being too reliant on it isn’t too much of a problem because it just isn’t like people just don’t believe that it will happen, which is sad, honestly. Like it’s supposed to be something that it’s a.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:44.358)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (22:51.104)
You know, a justice system that is supposed to be of the people and for the people should be of the people and for the people. It’s sad that everybody doesn’t believe in it at all.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:57.862)
Yeah.

Well, you kind of addressed that in the first episode too, where you said that towards the end of all of this stuff that your lawyer or one of the lawyers said, like, you now officially have like, you know, an unofficial doctorate in legal system because you had to do so much work, which is mind blowing that if something happens to someone.

Jane Aster Roe (23:14.872)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (23:19.494)
and there are lawyers and there is a legal system that’s designed to represent them. They shouldn’t have to do all that stuff. You know, if I’m going to a burger joints to get a burger, I shouldn’t have to go into the back and like prepare the patty and cook the burger and then serve it to myself. It sounds like you had to do so much of that during your procedure, during the whole ordeal.

Jane Aster Roe (23:40.076)
Yeah, yeah, and I think that that’s unfortunately inevitable, especially when you go through a criminal case. When you go through a criminal case, you don’t have a lawyer. I think a lot of people, that’s one of the main things that I want people to understand who don’t have a lot of knowledge about the justice system when it comes to this, is that people think that…

prosecutors are lawyers for victims. That is not true. Victims do not have lawyers in the criminal justice system. They are a witness for the prosecutor. The prosecutor is prosecuting a case on behalf of the…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (24:10.215)
Mm-hmm.

Jane Aster Roe (24:26.196)
government and the victim is sort of a witness for the prosecutor. So you end up being a witness to your own crime. That’s how that’s set up. And it’s not really the prosecutor’s job to help the it’s not, you know, it’s kind and it’s nice for the prosecutor to help the victim and prep the victim and, you know, stand up for the victim’s rights. But it’s not really their job. They’re not obligated to do that.

And so the criminal justice system is where victims really end up floundering because there isn’t really anyone who’s there specifically standing up for what they want and what their rights are. people also victims also really flounder there because

One of the main things that will happen if a case goes to trial is that you’ll be questioned by the lawyer for the accused individual, and that’s called a cross-examination. If you had a lawyer, you would prep for a cross-examination for days.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (25:43.538)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (25:43.702)
You would practice for like for hours, for days, you would practice and practice and practice. A prosecutor cannot really help prep the victim for this because if they do, if they help prep a victim too much for that, it can be considered leading a witness and it can be considered witness tampering.

and then the case can get thrown out. So victims will often walk into the cross-examination completely unprepared for what’s about to happen to them. And that cross-examination where they’re being essentially, you know, picked apart on the stand, that’s where a lot of people end up feeling really, really, really violated and traumatized.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (26:33.668)
Yeah, can, again, I can only imagine. It’s so funny because, you know, I really want to focus on mindset. I’m always trying to understand how people got to where they are through like the hard work, the hard times, the long days, like whatever it is that they’ve experienced, how they kept going, the tools, the trip. You seem to want to focus on, excuse me, the justice system, which is okay. And I agree with you. So

Jane Aster Roe (26:36.216)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (26:58.706)
With my question before, what I was trying to tee up was, I guess, both of those things where I wasn’t saying that one is worse or more important than the other. I had a guest on recently, Catherine Harrison. did the largest, it’s the first of a kind, a very large first of a kind multi-year study of mental health in the Canadian music industry. And during our conversation, we talked about some of the facts and

Overwhelmingly, there’s a lot of issues. There’s a lot of issues within the music industry on all levels that are causing a lot of mental health. And I said, I get that. And systematically or systemically, we need to change for sure.

But we also have this weird ability as human beings on this planet to be within a system without a system. Meaning you can be in that ridiculous horrible system, but then give yourself all kinds of tools and armor to be less likely to be impacted by that. And I think that’s what I was trying to say was I’m not, ecosystem doesn’t need to be addressed, but like what can individuals do to help themselves to have a better chance of continuing to lead a really happy, healthy life?

Jane Aster Roe (27:58.766)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (28:10.924)
Yeah, so one of the, got to have a really lovely conversation with an activist in the space who talked a lot about community care and the importance of community care in these situations, which is, you know, where you, and the idea of community care is sort of that.

is sort of building networks of communities within your life so that you can sort of uplift and support the people around you. And you can find community in a lot of spaces, right? Like you can…

If you don’t know where to start, some of the best ways to do that is like to just start going to classes. Like there are so many classes for adults. And some of the, you know, one of the things that she suggested, and we are gonna probably release that community care conversation as a bonus with our show. But she was saying one of the really great places to start is with classes for adults. And then you can kind of start to get to know people. But.

being able to reach out to.

friends and build networks of friends who you can rely on and turn to in times like this. Like one of the things that is really important to me is being able to call somebody and vent. Venting feels amazing. Like that feels so great when you’re having a hard time. Like even just saying like, don’t you think this is ridiculous? Like calling someone up and being like, I can’t believe this is happening to you. Not think this is crazy. And then the other person goes, yeah, that is crazy. I can’t believe it. And then you just

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (29:42.844)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (29:55.412)
kind of feel validated, right? So that sort of like building those channels of people who can like hold and support you when you’re going through hard times. And community care can even just be like the friends you already have. And that is…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (29:57.253)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (30:10.076)
Mm-hmm.

Jane Aster Roe (30:14.638)
I think that’s sort of like what you’re speaking to, yes, is building those kind of networks who can support you as you go through difficult things in your life and reaching out to, and again, there are, we have limited, it needs to be so much better, but there are programs. Like we do have some amount of programs. we’ve been collating resources. Like if you are somebody who’s struggling, we do have some,

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (30:18.02)
Absolutely.

Jane Aster Roe (30:44.342)
programs where you can get like counseling and support and all those things for you know low cost or free and that they can point you you know in sort of directions and all of those things you know I think it’s all part of a kind of like a web you’ve to kind of got to build a web to help bring yourself up and I mean for me like I

Also, yeah, I think I built myself up with like a combination of lots of things of like friends and and like therapy and medication and, you know, and taking care of myself. And those are all the things that kind of built me up to a place where then I could, you know, create a project that was like doing activism. Right. Because you have to be like, feel

good in yourself before you can start speaking like on a stage basically.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (31:47.568)
Yeah, I agree. mean, I regularly say you got to feel it to heal it, right? If you don’t feel it first, you can’t heal it. And without healing, you can’t go on to deal to get things out there wider. I’m trying to tailor my questions so that you don’t feel like you have to check yourself and speak from the first person. What can I say, not say? So maybe we’ll try a third person. I don’t understand the mindset.

Jane Aster Roe (31:51.246)
Mm-hmm.

Jane Aster Roe (31:56.151)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (32:12.614)
that I would need in that situation, because I’ve been in that situation. I can only go to my like tricks and tips and tools that I have, but this happens to a fellow human today, tomorrow. What advice would you say to them that like, what are some of the things that they could do to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, even if the tunnel is really long, that tomorrow, you know, it’s okay to feel guilt, shame, horrible, whatever, anger.

But some of the things you might be able to do or might consider doing in order to start down that process of healing are blank. Do you have like a list of?

Jane Aster Roe (32:49.422)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a lovely question. Yeah. Okay, so what I will say is there are lots of things and no one thing is the right thing to do. You can do lots. I think there are times when…

things like this happen and you feel so awful that you just have to sort of get to the end of a day. Like there were certainly times in my life where I felt like I just have to get to the end of this day. If I can get to the end of this day, then that will be a success and that I can try again tomorrow.

i had times like that i remember when specifically when i was like feeling a period of that i this is gonna sound ridiculous but i watched i watched frozen 2 because that had like come out around that time or or something but i watched frozen 2 and ana sings a song in frozen 2 called do the next right thing and i was like sobbing it made me sob i was like my gosh i can’t believe she wrote a song for me

And because she basically sings in that song she basically is like okay when everything is awful all you have to do is Take a step like just you don’t have to think about the whole picture because the whole picture is way too scary So all you have to do is just see okay. What’s the next step that I’m gonna take? Okay? I’m gonna take this step. Okay. What’s the next thing I have to do? Okay? I have to just get out of bed. Okay. What’s the next thing I have to do? Okay? I have to do this thing and then

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (34:27.63)
one.

Jane Aster Roe (34:33.802)
Okay, well, and then towards the end of the song, she goes, okay, well, I think at the end of the song, she says, and with the dawn, what comes then when it’s clear that everything will never be the same again? Okay, well, I’ll make the choice and I’ll listen to that voice and I’ll do the next right thing. So that song made me sob because I was like, was, I was in the, I remember I was in the movie theater and everyone was like, what is wrong with her? I was like, I’m connecting. I’m emotionally connecting to Ana and Kristen Bell.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (34:50.234)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (35:03.696)
But then I started listening to that song a lot. So, you know, maybe that will help you if you’re not somebody who has a hatred for Frozen, because I know some people it’s too much for them, but maybe try listening to that song because…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (35:23.378)
Well, I think what you’re saying is that there are so many different tools and it also depends on how you connect with something or how something connects with you.

Jane Aster Roe (35:27.831)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (35:31.662)
Yeah, like little, little something that exactly, but again, in the hardest moments, I do think the idea of just trying to get to the end of a day and then being like, okay, let me try to get to the next day. I also think that in the hardest moments, like when you’re in the thick of it, do you think just…

like cut yourself a total break, like cut yourself complete slack and just do things that make you feel good. Like if that means that you literally just have to like spend the day watching your favorite show and that’s it, that’s okay because that’s how you need to like take care of your nervous system that day and that’s how you’re handling it. Like you just in, when you’re in the really hardest moments,

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (36:07.964)
Mm-hmm.

Jane Aster Roe (36:20.05)
you need to just be really kind to yourself about the way that you need to handle it. That would be like my biggest advice there. And then my other advice would be that I do think that it’s important to find people that you can talk to. Like I think trying to carry it alone is is makes it much heavier. So yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (36:44.835)
I agree. think that by talking to things, sorry, talking about things with other people.

you start to realize that you’re not alone. You start to realize that it might not be normal, but that it happens and that there are other people that have experienced it. And you also start to, I think, put less weight on the thing in the sense that it’s, it’s less of a woe is me and I can’t like overcome this. You start to go back into a more positive self-talk where you say this is horrible, but I can overcome this. When I lost,

Jane Aster Roe (36:57.07)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (37:18.226)
baby girl, she was a week old. She died in my arms on Father’s Day last year. And you know, it’s going to take a lifetime of healing, but I never thought I’d be as good as I am with it now. Not that I’m good with it, but like I didn’t think I was healed with like, had I not been already doing so much work on myself and had the ability to go in work and talk about it and look for community that have experienced this thing. And by doing so you kind of

Jane Aster Roe (37:33.9)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (37:42.584)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (37:47.664)
You let the energy out. start to, I don’t want to say normalize because it sounds so wrong, but you just feel good with it. You start to feel better with it.

Jane Aster Roe (37:53.078)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I also think, I think that in the aftermath of something really traumatic, like, you know, losing someone, especially like, I’m so sorry, like losing a child, or

you know, sexual assault, which is very different experience, but again, traumatic experience. Sometimes, and I think, especially with something like sexual assault, a lot of your self-talk becomes really negative. When you talk to other people, other people are much kinder.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (38:17.894)
Yeah, we were both there.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (38:38.801)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (38:39.188)
about your experiences than you are sometimes to yourself, right? So like when you are in the midst of something, you might be saying, you know, I can’t believe that I am, you know, feeling this bad all the time, like, why can’t I get it together? And sometimes when you then talk to somebody else, they’re like, well, of course you feel sad this happened to you. It’s okay that you feel sad, we can feel sad together.

sometimes that is really empowering.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (39:11.536)
Yeah, I agree with you. I love that you also brought up Frozen. So I have, my own children are five and eight. I have four in this house, but two that are physically mine. And they grew up with Frozen one and Frozen two. There was a lot of Frozen, probably more than I wanted in the house, but it’s not about me. And it’s funny how when I started to have my huge transformation a few years ago,

Jane Aster Roe (39:20.931)
Mm-hmm.

Jane Aster Roe (39:27.064)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (39:39.014)
Not that I wasn’t like aware or spiritual before, but like I just got to a point where I went really deep internally. I started to realize that in the first song, first movie, they were talking about letting it go, right? Let it go. That became so monumental for me and still is. And then the second one was into the unknown, which you have to let it go and you have to be bold and go into those things. it’s, it’s just to come full circle for me in my life.

Jane Aster Roe (39:52.212)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Jane Aster Roe (39:59.317)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (40:04.034)
Mm-hmm.

I love the frozen movies.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (40:09.362)
This is not sponsored by Disney.

Jane Aster Roe (40:13.376)
It is not. It’s not sponsored by Disney. I have my own critiques of Disney, but I do love the Frozen movies.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (40:20.338)
I think they’re very solid overall. When I was in university, I developed a fear of contamination.

Probably because I smoked way too much weed and I was paranoid and all kinds of stuff were happening in my mind And I didn’t have the tools and resolve to kick it until a girlfriend at the time said listen, you know Here’s a book go see a psychiatrist and I did I mean it was bad I was like, you know Lysol in my door handle and Lysol in my hands and I wasn’t eating anything I was eating only out of a vending machine because I was terrified that everything was gonna poison me, you know trichinosis Salmonella whatever was

not logical, but thankfully didn’t last long. And even though I met with this person three or four times, I remember them saying that I think that the most salient thing that took away was baby steps. You have to think about it like baby steps. Here’s your problem. Here’s the solution. The only way to get there is to go there. And if you take one little baby step every single time,

You’re now that much further away from the problem and that much closer to the solution. And once you get to about the halfway point, you look back and you’re like, well, it’s the same amount of space to get there. So why would I go back? So really in your mind, I start to say for every problem that I have, just figure out how to take the baby steps just to start the momentum and then get yourself to that halfway point and everything will be good.

Let it go.

Jane Aster Roe (41:45.976)
I agree. Yeah. Do the next right thing. Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (41:50.354)
So you’ve shared a lot about the mindset around this without being able to specifically talk about your experience. And I don’t want to harp on it too much. I think the bottom line when it comes to anything traumatic is that community helps, conversation helps. You just have to be honest with what happened to you. You have to be honest with the experience and your feelings of that experience. And then just start to…

I guess digest those and and then export them export them outward

Jane Aster Roe (42:23.926)
Yeah, yeah, mean, yeah, I mean, I also will say like, sometimes things are too big for just talking alone. Like sometimes you need more help than that. I’m, I’m on.

medication. I take meds and that really helped me. I used to not sleep and now I take and then I was able to and a lot of that came from PTSD and I had crazy nightmares. I used to never sleep and I thought I need to muscle my way through it but in the end it just wasn’t reasonable. So I’m somebody who takes medication to sleep because and maybe at

point I’ll be able to stop that but there are times when something is beyond what just you know talking and things can solve so sometimes you do need to like turn to doctors and say like this is beyond what one can function with.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (43:24.922)
Yeah, I mean, that’s a great point. This is by no means like any form of medical advice or thereof. Not every experience is the same. Not everyone reacts the same and not everything works the same for people in order to heal. And you you said something that I didn’t even think about, which was medication or things to help after the fact. So bottom line is seek out resources for your particular situation and see what works for you. I don’t want to

fumble through you know like the trauma around sexual assault because you know this and I don’t but why don’t we do what I think you really want to do which is talk about bit more of the justice system and like what what can even happen there like what it’s like the first episode I remember there was a point where someone said if you’re gonna come forward with this before you even talk to the police

or file a report, like maybe talk to a lawyer because when you open that can, there’s just so much that comes like piling or pouring out with it. you know, and everyone has seen the headlines. I really think that the whole thing started with the me too movement and then Weinstein going to jail. But now there’s like a lot more visibility on, and you see them in the press release for your, for your show, Diddy Epstein hockey Canada, Jacob Hoggard from Headley.

Jane Aster Roe (44:33.656)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (44:54.014)
so many different names that have been in the headlines associated with this. Is it something that’s getting a lot more attention now? Is there something that’s a lot more focus on it? Are we starting to see things move in a positive direction with the justice system? You take it over. Tell me about all things legal.

Jane Aster Roe (45:11.116)
Yeah, that’s interesting. I think the way that I think about it is that the Me Too movement was an interesting moment where we had, it was probably about a year and a half when we had a moment where all of the sudden survivors,

and sort of, and a lot of women felt like they could come forward and say, this happened to me. And that they were taken seriously and that, you know, there were some levels of maybe like incremental changes in potentially like workplaces and like how workplaces handle things.

where conversations being had. There then was sort of an intense retaliatory movement against that. And I think we’re still in that moment right now. It’s sort of the moment that we’re in right now.

is where we do see all these cases come through in the headlines, but we’re not, when they come through in the headlines, we’re not necessarily seeing people coming forward and then the person being found guilty at the end.

we are oftentimes, know, like Diddy, think a lot of people that happened and I think a lot of people were like, like, you know, I think the general consensus of the public was that he did a lot of things wrong. I think that was the general consensus. And he really only got found guilty on like very minor charges at the end of the day. Most of the charges he got off on, like most of the main ones.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (47:03.036)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (47:11.441)
Right.

Jane Aster Roe (47:17.936)
that had to do with like actual assault, they went away. And right now there’s also an intense movement of when women come forward, there’s a huge level of instant internet vitriol that also…

happens in reaction to that, that I also think makes people way less inclined to come forward. So while I do think it is in our head, sorry.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (47:56.028)
Can you, sorry, you tell me about some of that vitriol? Like I’m online all day long, unfortunately, with what I do. But like, what do you mean that there’s vitriol and pushback on, you know, women that come forward? Can you give me an example?

Jane Aster Roe (48:02.508)
Mm-hmm.

Jane Aster Roe (48:12.654)
So like, let’s think about even recently. So like, let’s even think about one of the main things that, so not everybody, to be clear, not everybody does that. It’s like a very specific group of people who then yell very loudly in the direction. But I think one of the like best examples of that is that I think one of the industries that had the biggest,

response to the Me Too movement was the entertainment industry. And then recently, we’ve had Blake Lively came forward and said, this happened to me with Justin Baldoni. And the level of reaction and vitriol that came forward as a reaction to that was really fast and vicious and unprecedented. And

you know recently

And then, know, as you follow it sort of like as you kind of follow the pace the general public I think a little bit lost interest, but you know, there were diehard truthers out there. kept I paid attention to that case just because I was so sort of like taken aback by how strongly people came out against her like even sort of the general public I felt really strongly came out against her and she

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (49:19.611)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (49:35.108)
in here.

Jane Aster Roe (49:38.948)
offered a ton of proof in her at the end of the day. Like she offered a lot of evidence and you know in my opinion and allegedly and let’s say that for legal reasons and Justin Baldoni in my opinion and allegedly was not able to provide well actually he wasn’t able to provide proof. They dismissed everything all of his all of his claims. He was not and he you know and recently and I actually wrote an article about this recently

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (49:50.276)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (50:08.752)
like earlier this week actually, a judge dismissed a lot of her claims except for the retaliation and the retaliation claims.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (50:22.065)
Mm-hmm.

Jane Aster Roe (50:22.434)
those are going forward. Her sexual harassment claims most of those were dismissed. But what was interesting is that those were dismissed on technicalities. Like it was because, you know, she, you know, she said California law and the movie was filmed in New Jersey and also because she was an independent contractor. So she didn’t kind of get the rights of an employee. You know, he even said in his statement that, you know,

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (50:31.556)
room.

Jane Aster Roe (50:52.468)
she experienced did con like was reasonable to assume that that constituted sexual harassment but because she’s an independent contractor she doesn’t get those protections which is you know exposes i think a hole in our justice system that independent contractors don’t get the right of those protections but my whole point around that is that nobody is going to want to come forward in

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (51:02.054)
benefit.

Jane Aster Roe (51:19.506)
that industry again, because her career got destroyed by coming forward. So when you say like, you know, the kind of pushback and retaliation, the level of vitriol that she experienced, I think, is going to be very discouraging for preventing anyone else. Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (51:38.214)
Absolutely.

Yeah, I think this is part of the complexity around all of this. I’m by no means taking any sides or saying that justice doesn’t deserve to be served. But the truth is often so far removed from what we see. I don’t know why, but I started to think about Amber Heard and Johnny Depp when you were talking about how it was the total opposite, where she was coming forward with all these claims. And not to say they didn’t have a violent streak within the relationship.

Jane Aster Roe (52:01.207)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (52:10.44)
But a lot of the stuff that she was saying proved to be untrue as well. And there are people on both sides. Well, I could be wrong. What I’m trying to

Jane Aster Roe (52:16.47)
Well, yeah, what’s interesting with Amber Heard is that there also was like a very like Amber Heard also experienced like she wrote an essay about yeah, Amber Heard is really interesting because she also kind of experienced a really intense media.

manipulation and twisting of what actually happened and what she was actually saying. So I think the general public walked away with the feeling that Amber Heard was a liar, but

Amber heard when you actually looked at the facts of what she was saying like in the actual like documents and what he was saying like she was mostly sharing like you know things that happen and then you know in this gets sort of into and I won’t get into it but it gets sort of into like in domestic abuse situations sometimes when somebody what will happen is like somebody will like somebody who is a domestic abuser will

attack someone and the person will fight back and a lot of the times if you fight back we have like a lot of stats that show that women are often like punished viciously for fighting back in those situations and that legally the best thing you could possibly do is to never fight back but that’s completely unreasonable to human behavior so that’s a whole other interesting case

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (53:32.156)
Right.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (53:43.858)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (53:49.68)
Yeah.

I agree.

100 % I wasn’t like trying to go into the specific case I guess what I’m trying to do is say that like it’s so hard to understand the truth because on both sides of

Jane Aster Roe (53:58.346)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And these cases get litigated in the public. And one of the other things is that they get litigated in the public, and a lot of people don’t actually understand how… Like, again, they don’t necessarily understand how the law works, and they don’t understand… Why should they? You have to go to, like, law school to…

like under like you have to go to law school to interpret court documents and things like that and so then people just pull out what they think that goes on the headlines and then that shapes everybody’s opinion so when these get litigated in the public it’s kind of a disaster.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (54:25.009)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (54:30.94)
Excellently.

Yeah, well, what I was trying to say is that like the

There are so many people that do these horrible things that are not found guilty. There are also people who do not do these things who say maybe something happened to them when it didn’t actually happen and they’re so like deep into the lie that they will not, you know, do the opposite. I’m not saying that any of these women are liars, but it does happen. It does happen where people say, I don’t want to lose this, this public facing argument. So I’m just going to dig in and stick with the lie. And then there’s also the problem that some

Jane Aster Roe (54:53.838)
Mm-hmm.

Jane Aster Roe (54:57.356)
Yep.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (55:08.212)
Sometimes the justice system just is totally messed up. I recently finished the surrender experiment by Michael Singer and you know the whole book was about letting go and meditation and yoga and also his career. I had no idea where the book was going to go and it got to the point where this guy is like a billionaire more or less through just going with the flow and then some of his former employees are doing all kinds of illegal activities with with finance and whatnot.

he gets nabbed because he’s the CEO as well as a whole bunch of other people and he then has to spend like half a decade of his life in and around lawyers in and around the legal system in the US to the point where this whole thing was because someone else had lied to the DOJ or whatever was saying no no it wasn’t me it was the executives and then you have this court case where they’re relying on they don’t want to not win

So they’re just pushing forward under the assumption that it’s this, even though all of their information is just coming from some dude that lied about it.

Jane Aster Roe (56:08.383)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (56:13.964)
Yeah, the justice system in general is actually like a true mess. Like I actually don’t even necessarily because again and that gets into like the like we know that the justice system is like very founded on like it’s like very racist in its principle. It’s like, you know, it it’s

It’s incredibly punitive. People are in jail when they shouldn’t be in jail. Like in general, the justice system is a disaster. so, like this, it’s, it’s, it’s very bad at this, this situation, but it’s also bad in a myriad of other ways. and so this sort of like the goal of the podcast is that we are

is to have a conversation about how it functions in this way and how we might be able to shift it in order to look at what survivors actually want and actually what justice would actually look like for them.

in that situation, the goal is sort of like to have conversations about it and for people to be having conversations about it.

And I think that people should be having conversations about all aspects of the justice system because there’s lots of ways that it’s flawed as you were as you were just saying. My area of expertise is this particular area of where it’s flawed, but I do completely agree with you that it’s just like kind of a disaster everywhere.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (57:53.498)
Yeah, I don’t know why, but you sparked the Marilyn Manson quote. When Columbine happened, I think this was in the Bowling for Columbine documentary, someone said, like, what would you say to the survivors? And he basically said, like, I wouldn’t say a single thing to them. I would listen. I would listen to see what they have to say. And I think that that is

not just the point of this conversation, in what you’re trying to do with your stuff is share information, have a conversation. And even if you don’t know anything about it and you’re fumbling through examples of Amber Heard and whatnot, that doesn’t mean you have an angle or agenda or that you’re speaking poorly. That means you’re trying to understand.

Jane Aster Roe (58:38.386)
No, it’s like, no, of course not. And I didn’t mean to. Yeah. Yeah. But the.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (58:42.227)
no no, I didn’t mean that. I for the audience.

Jane Aster Roe (58:48.878)
But yeah, the point is is that I think that we need to put the people who the crime happened to back up at the center of the conversation and listen to what did they actually want here? And that is sort of like where that’s where we kind of like that’s where our six episodes built to that’s where our sort of like that’s where we’re what it is of like, okay, let’s deconstruct for everybody how it works if you’ve never

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (58:59.889)
Yeah.

Jane Aster Roe (59:18.832)
encountered this that’s okay like we can talk through it and we can figure it out so that we can all have a baseline understanding okay great now we understand now let’s hear what do we what do people who’ve been through this actually want to happen and then what do we and from there how can we all like what kind of what do we think about that like what are we as a society think about what we can do to help that

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (59:46.482)
Absolutely turn trauma into healing My guests always wrap up our show with some like words of wisdom which you will have to do before you go, but Why don’t you why don’t you kind of end us here with this thought or this question?

What is your ideal outcome? You you’ve been through this horrendous experience. Millions of other people have been through similar experiences. The justice system has a lot of issues globally, everywhere. It’s not just this. I mean, we could probably have like a whole separate podcast on all the issues within power and control and the old guard and old systems, which I am hopeful will dissolve and change for the record.

Jane Aster Roe (01:00:23.299)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:00:35.164)
But with this podcast series in particular, with your work, what would your ideal outcome be? What do you hope to achieve or to improve with everything that you’re doing?

Jane Aster Roe (01:00:46.924)
You know, I do genuinely hope that we can, you know, like more people can have a better understanding of how it doesn’t work and that after listening and understanding, we can, you know, work together to move towards a system that feels like it’s actually giving

justice to survivors and providing accountability. I give at the end of the series sort of a thought about what I think that might look like, but I also give it as an open invitation to for people to, you know, offer their own suggestions and opinions so that we can build off of it because it’s going to take all of us to talk about it and to have conversations and like, you know, I think

There’s a quote that says that we’re all living in a world that somebody else imagined. And I think we all need to work to imagine what we want the future to be. And in order to do that, we need to understand where we’re at now so that we can talk about what we want as a better future. So I genuinely hope that the system can get better. I don’t think it’s impossible.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:02:08.731)
love you.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:02:14.704)
I think the easiest way to do that is conversation, is dissemination of information. I do coaching as part of everything that I do with music industry and running a website and having a podcast. I also do coaching with mindset and lifestyle. And my tagline is simply get out of your mind and into your heart. Everyone lives in their heads. And the metaphor of that is to go inward, right? Like go inward.

And truly sit with yourself, sit with your thoughts and then realize they’re just thoughts and words. You are not the only person that has those crazy thoughts and words. Start talking about them and not only will you feel better, you’ll realize that other people are doing the same thing, feeling the same thing, thinking the same thing. But then you’ll start to connect and you’ll start to grow and you’ll start to improve and at the same time you’re raising the people around you because they’re doing the same thing.

So I’m really grateful for how brave you are and the women that you are working on this project with and that you’re doing this because you know I have little girls in my house and I have little boys in my house and I want a future where they can be safe from things that shouldn’t befall them. Life is hard enough as it is. We don’t need them to be victims of someone else’s poor decisions.

Jane Aster Roe (01:03:36.15)
No, yeah. Thank you so much. And thanks for the conversation.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:03:39.174)
So you’re welcome. This was great. I really appreciate it. Hopefully I didn’t butcher anything. Hopefully I don’t seem like I’m insensitive at all.

Jane Aster Roe (01:03:52.039)
No! my goodness, no.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:03:54.844)
Good. Well, Jane, tell me how we sign off today. What is the most important thing for listeners and viewers to hear from your mouth as we wrap up?

Jane Aster Roe (01:04:08.396)
I think I have two pieces of advice. My first piece of advice is that, you know, we end our first episode with this and it is a quote from one of the survivors that we spoke to. And it is advice for anybody who’s listening who might have experienced this. And…

It is from a woman that we call Georgia on the show and she says that, you know, the best thing you could possibly do is say it out loud so that you’re not holding it to yourself. And if you don’t want to do anything about it, you don’t want to bring it to the police. absolutely, nobody ever has to do that, but you should still say it out loud. So because it becomes a lot less scary once you say it out loud.

My second piece of advice is for people who are listening, who feel like the topic is really scary and maybe are like nervous about how to engage with it. And that would be to say that…

It’s okay if you don’t have like a ton of expertise in the area. Just being open to listening is really, really important, which is also why I’m so grateful to you because you were so open and willing today.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:05:44.518)
That was perfect. Let me just hit stop to make sure we got everything and then we’ll wrap up.